Sunday, July 14, 2013

I've just come across a short film by Linus Höök / Studio Tintin which was commissioned by the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg for JH Engström's exhibition Haunts in 2005. Engström talks about about intuition, risk and freedom, mixing images, exploration and extremes and the importance of not explaining. If you admire Engström's work as I do, the film is well worth a look HERE.

And interestingly, JH Engström's new book Sketch of Paris published by Aperture will be available end of October and I assume launched at Paris Photo in November. You can pre-order it at amazon HERE.

For more than 20 years, Swedish photographer JH Engström (born 1969) has
spent time living and working in Paris, a city that, like New York, has
a long photographic pedigree; countless photographers have been
inspired by its iconic architecture and busy streets. Sketch of Paris,
however, is hardly a catalog of classic Parisian scenes, offering
instead a raw yet lyrical portrayal of the artist's misadventures, loves
and random encounters in its streets, bars and artist lofts--an
entirely personal Paris. Drawing more from Nan Goldin and Anders Peterson
than Atget or Henri Cartier-Bresson, Engström brings us on a gritty,
no-holds-barred guided tour of life in his adopted city. The book brings
together more than 250 color and black-and-white
photographs--self-portraits, nudes, portraits of lovers, friends,
strangers and the occasional street scene--all shot between 1991 and
2012, tracing a critical time during the development of the artist's own
voice and vision.

JH is also part of the LOST HOME project initiated by Japanese SUPER LABO publisher Yasunori Hoki. Ten photographers - Harvey Benge, JH Engström, Roe Ethridge, Takashi Homma, Ron Jude, Daido
Moriyama, Christian Patterson, Slavica Perkovic, Bertien van Manen and
Terri Weifenbach - will respond to the idea of lost home, and the series, slip case packaged, will launch with a book signing at this years Paris Photo. I've had preview of JH's LOST HOME book, it's not surprisingly, quite wonderful. Not to mention edgy and tough.

About Me

My pictures explore the strange anthropology of cities. The unusual and overlooked in the human landscape.
I am asking the viewer to question the idea that photographs as documents are complete representations of subject.
I'm interested in the universality of life and the idea of parallel lives - when one thing is happening here, something else is happening over there. The democracy of non-places fascinates me, in the knowledge that inevitably nothing is as it seems.
I work and live between Auckland and Paris.
http://harveybenge.com/
email:harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz